Counterfeit harm is realTo The Editor: Your Oct. 1 story in portrays the rampant counterfeiting of handbags and other trendy items along Canal St. as nothing more than a bargain hunters dream ( news article, Oct. 1  Oct. 8, Fake designs draw crowds to Canal St.) Mingxia Xus story was so one-sided one has to wonder if the writer has a vested interest in bringing additional busloads of people into Chinatown to buy cute fakes. The fact that Xu finds nothing wrong with it is a scandal.

Whats next from your paper? Handy tips on where to buy crack or automatic weapons in the area?

Counterfeiting is a felony. It costs honest businesses and taxpayers millions. It costs hundreds of Americans their jobs. The real story is why so many people  politicians, police, shoppers, and now Downtown Express  continue to condone this massive organized crime operation in Chinatown.

Troy Torrison

Local TrustTo The Editor: Regarding your article, Competing groups offer owners of buildings cash (Downtown Homes and Lofts, Oct. 1  Oct. 7): We wantt to thank you for introducing Historic Neighborhood Trust to our community. While we are new, we are by no means inexperienced  our three board members have a collective sixty years of experience in our neighborhood, and many more than that in our respective professions and businesses: namely architecture and, real estate., and business consulting. As the only local Trust, we are able to professionally guide facade easements through the process, and ensure that the financial and other resources created by those easements remain for the benefit of the neighborhoods from which they derive.

Moe Fishman is also a comrade of mine in Veterans for Peace, New York chapter. Thats a brag. Hes also my senior by six years; I didnt make it into the war in Spain, only into W.W. II, in the E.T.O., 1941-45. I salute him.

The war in Spain, in which Moe was a gallant warrior, should really be called the Clerico-Fascist War of Counterrevolution. Franco was the darling of the Roman Catholic hierarchs, priests, religion and priest-ridden laity. I was a Catholic and parish priests were not shy in attacking the Spanish Republic from the altar. But the magesterium of the church was behind Franco. Just as it had been behind Benito Mussolini, starting in October 1922 when he created the first fascist state, in Rome.

In the Spanish War of Counterrevolution, Hitler and Mussolini poured divisions of troops and squadrons of luftwaffe into Spain on the side of fascist and Roman Catholic Francisco Franco who liquidated the Spanish Republic, and it remains liquidated, and replaced by a monarchy.

Just as the Socialist Soviets was liquidated on Christmas 1991.

The next step of the counterrevolutionaries, under Bush, will push through is the destruction of the welfare state; its a continuum.